


No Glory for the Living

by lemurious



Series: Arda Forged [6]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending (of a sort), Arda Forged, Badass Thuringwethil, Canon Divergence, Destruction of Beleriand, Gen, POV First Person, Post-War of Wrath, Regret, Space Flight, Technology, War, War of Wrath, Weapons of Mass Destruction (Implied), dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/pseuds/lemurious
Summary: The War of Wrath in Arda Forged 'verse: with dragons, starships and destruction of Beleriand, here portrayed in the voices of those who were neither its chief heroes nor its worst villains, and have been silenced in canon.Chapter 1. Círdan (People of the Shore)Chapter 2. Thuringwethil (Riding Shadows)Chapter 3. Eönwë (Now We Are Become Death)Chapter 4. Eärendil (The Brightest Star)
Relationships: Círdan & Eärendil, Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien), Eönwë & Sauron | Mairon, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon, Sauron | Mairon & Thuringwethil
Series: Arda Forged [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839175
Comments: 20
Kudos: 31





	1. People of the Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Círdan is waiting for news of Eärendil's attempt to reach Valinor.

It is getting harder to drag myself through the days by sheer force of will, like a log through the marshes that lie right outside my windows, sodden and grey. 

Grey as the threadbare cloaks of refugees trickling in from cities whose names I had only heard in song. Nargothrond, Doriath, Gondolin, syllables rolling off my tongue, sweet as smoke from a funeral pyre. 

Grey as the leaves that were sighing in the soft wind of Cuiviénen when I awoke under the stars, naked and nameless. Colors would come later, silvery green of a meadow in twilight, blazing white of the first morning under a new sun, shades of red soaking the ground, and the Sea, green and white and grey and purple and the darkest blue. 

It has to be sufficient for us, the people of the shore, this blessing of a different hue each morning.

My locks and beard have long turned grey to match the acid soil of the marshes, my eyes have never been another color, there is no light of Valinor in them. I failed to make it there due to a single moment of choice to search for the members of our company who had been left behind.

I have been collecting the lost and the left behind ever since, and in those brief periods when the wars move farther away to the East, constructing ships out of dreams and wishes as much as out of the sunken trees of the swamp. Building harbors and courts, teaching the newcomers to live by the sea, to bait a hook, spear a fish, gather nets to bring them inside at what appears just a slight change in the wind.

Offering safety for dazed survivors of wars they had never agreed to fight and for ragged princes of Houses long gone. All of them huddling in my Havens like barnacles fighting for space in puddles left on the shore and just as ephemeral against the rising tide.

One day, yet another prince appeared, younger and marked harder by war than most, together with his wife, whose slender frame and shrill voice were almost able to hide a hard uncompromising gleam in her eyes. 

When the kid decided he wanted to storm the court of the Valar and demand them to deal with the fallout of their own careless doom, I felt hopeful for the first time in centuries, and even a false hope may be preferable to the slow decay that awaits us on the shore. So I gave him my best ship we renamed Vingilótë, and called him captain.I would have steered her myself, but the kid – Eärendil – forced me to admit that the Havens are holding onto the flimsy semblance of normalcy built on my constant, calm presence, a reassurance of posture and voice, however fake it may seem to myself. Having dedicated my life to waiting for those who had been left behind, how could I be the one to leave them now?

Perhaps the kid will be admitted to Valinor and bring an end to all our wars at the head of a splendid and terrible army, more incomprehensible than any design from the Enemy that we had faced in battle so far - or else our age will burn itself out with a final siege of the Havens, and I will send the last flotilla without hope towards the unreachable West.

We spend our days waiting, gathering mussels from the Sea and remnants of lost battalions from the land, imagining the time when all wars will be over even for the Eldar, and I too will be allowed to sail.

I have but one dream left: the wish, nay, the certainty of a day that will come when I will wrench my rudder hard within sight of the faraway shore, turning away from the Blessed Realm to sail the Southern seas unknown, far beyond the grey marshes of Arda or the shining walls of Valinor.


	2. Riding Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thuringwethil is getting ready to ride Ancalagon to his last battle.

Standing on a parapet, whispering an old refrain: _red eyes, iron claws, I walk the walls of night, I am a messenger of darkness and a shadow at your heart._

Ain’t it just the neatest phrase, Words of Power and poetic to boot. 

Mairon told me to keep repeating it to stay focused through the pain of wings twisting my shoulder blades as they would shoot out of my back, bones breaking, just quick enough to prevent me from splashing right outside the gates like a very messy doormat. I suppose it must be my own impatience at fault for jumping off a tower before our work was finished, risking a century of labor and increasingly creative curses while trying to make a pair of wings spring out of a body of an already misshapen Maia. 

How I ended up as the one wingless, voiceless member of the entire flock of Manwë’s, I have no idea. I only know that at some point in the Beginning I had stopped listening to the Music in its endless boring variations of the same theme, and shut my ethereal version of a mouth so that I could think of what exactly I would like to do with this whole Arda project. 

Next thing you know, I am stuck in a fancy court with everyone staring at me like I am the first mistake they had ever conceived of, much less made. No wings, no voice, eyes blinded by a pair of lamps that nobody ever bothers to turn off. On my side, I was dismayed to hear no grand plans whatsoever for Arda, which apparently came out too dark and twisted for them, with too many flaws, just like me.

Since a wingless Maia is largely useless in a court of the Lord of Winds, they left me alone to wander the rest of Valinor. I figured I might as well learn a skill, so I started creeping around the corners of Aulë’s holdings, beneath the notice of the vast majority of my Maiar siblings competing for a word of praise from Aulë, who showed a level of talent surpassed only by his thirst for flattery. Except for one Maia, who would not let anything or anyone escape his curious glance, not even a clumsy stranger in the shadowy corner of the forge. And how surprised he was when my madcap theories and experimental designs were more than a match for his ambition. 

The rest, as they say, is history we machined ourselves out of iron and hubris. All right, I will admit, with minor help from a certain Vala who swept my newly-bonded Maia right off to Arda with flotsam like me floating in his wake. No jealousy here. Love comes in different forms, and mine is the sparkling joy of a shared engineering project instead of a blaze of passion, which I admit I had never felt or could really imagine. Mairon had enough of both to satisfy all of us. Lucky for him, because it kept me around and gave them a chance to learn where my true talents lie. The boring, quiet, unheroic stuff of plans, schedules, messages and meetings that win more wars than all the steel on Arda. 

After I organized a triple-side-air-and-aquatic assault towards a particularly notable victory, they asked me what I wished for in payment. Big surprise, called a flight Maia in the very first notes of the song, now I wanted to actually _become_ one, not that it was possible. How fortunate that impossible is the exact descriptor that would send Mairon to a frenzy of invention, with Melkor at his side following his orders without a word of complaint – I would have been surprised, except that I had no time for such emotions as the subject of the aforementioned experimentation. 

I would not care to describe the pain in detail, but it did not stop me from urging them to keep going, until they finally got me to shapeshift into a creature seemingly cobbled together from half of Arda’s fauna. No feathers and song for me – leather stretched around the bone and a clicking sonar instead – and yet I would not have exchanged it for anything. 

Giving me freedom, they knew better than to ask for devotion, as I rode the wind away, laughing, swaying on currents and darting into storms, from the Grinding Ice to the grey marshes at the Mouth of Sirion. They knew I would return, because where else could I find another couple of Ainur mad enough to refuse to be bound by gravity? 

Afterwards, we built other similar creatures together, of leather wings, steel carcasses, increasingly larger, fiercer, smarter, barreling in the skies spitting fire over the cities. We named the greatest of them Ancalagon the Black, and I became its master, its chief technician and its favorite rider. 

Now it’s about time to take him on a ride that is increasingly looking like it will be our last, because the army outside our gates is composed of my old buddies from Valinor, as righteous and obedient as they have always been, but with an extra age of military training. And I need to make this battle _stretch,_ long enough for Melkor and Mairon to follow through with their part of the plan. 

I had to stab my claws into both of their sides to separate them from each other for _one forsaken moment to listen to me._ Naively, I told them we all could survive, if we could only give up on the Silmarils and run, right now, and even if every fortress of ours fell, empires could be rebuilt. Melkor would not have any of that. _This host would scorch the entire Arda to reach me, and would think it a small price to pay,_ he claimed, and, after much sputtering, I had to agree, though Mairon, ever the loyal, ever the passionate fire Maia, still begged him to consider escape. 

But I would be a poor logistics officer if I had not come up with a passable solution. I wagged my claws in Melkor’s face – to his enormous surprise at such impertinence, which I hoped would snap him out of his end-of-days melancholy – and told him to grab whatever he needed and wait for us somewhere in the Void, he is a Vala after all, hanging out in nothingness for millennia is what we all did during the Song. Meanwhile, Mairon would better hightail it out of Thangorodrim quick as he can. _Someone_ should survive this, and I got an inkling that the big boss agrees with me that Mairon should get the chance. Also, both of us have rubbed off on him enough that (in a very _small_ way in my case) it'll be like we're still around.

I left them to their goodbyes and figured I’d give them some extra time by raining a bit of refreshing dragon fire on the heads of the Valarin host. And this is how I ended up on this parapet, ready to jump on Ancalagon’s back and grab the reins, whispering the half-forgotten phrases to focus against the same kind of fear that accompanied my first flights. 

What I did not tell Mairon is that I don’t really expect to survive, much less to be remembered. I’ve seen the monstrosity of a ship they are arming against us, a dragon can only do so much to fight that _and_ the whole flock of Eagles now sneering at me like they cannot believe such a creature could even have the indecency to fly. Joke’s on them, I am defending my home of choice that shaped me into who I have always wanted to become, and this is an end as fitting as any that will be sung about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to consider the idea that Thuringwethil is a former Maia of Manwë's who could not adopt a bird form. Also, I wanted to write her as asexual - and a dragon rider!


	3. Now We Are Become Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eönwë in Tirion just after the end of the War of Wrath.

I shall not think of it.

I shall think of our host riding a storm of ice and lightning, the great horn of Oromë’s blowing, of myself yelling in joy, in the front of our armies with a banner in my hand. 

I shall think of Valinor emptied, rows upon rows of the Firstborn returning to reclaim their birthplace, the faces of their families far less grim than could be expected, for their beloved ones riding into battle are guaranteed to return, although it may be to Mandos rather than Tirion, and victory is worth the cost. 

They have not seen the cost. 

I shall think of the Elven armies marching back to Valinor in triumph against the Enemy, the Silmarils retrieved and after a brief unfortunate skirmish cast into a chasm and into the ocean. 

I shall imagine the soldiers recovering, treating their wounds, perhaps already composing songs of great deeds at the gate of Thangorodrim, of Ancalagon’s fall breaking the iron towers, of Morgoth sent into the Void. 

I shall rejoice in bittersweet reunions of families long sundered by the Oaths that had finally lost their power.

I shall think of armies clashing in a pitched battle until our forces rode in, ready to win renown, eager to help defeat the Enemy. 

I was a fool. I did not realize…

He said as much. Mairon – who managed to escape before we broke the gates and entered in pride and splendor, searching for his former master – found me one evening after the Elven armies were safely on their way back to Valinor. I was overcome with pity for the fire Maia. We knew each other before he betrayed Aulë in exchange for whatever Morgoth offered in his honeyed lies, which must have turned into horror and torment for him. 

I wished to find him earlier, but feared for his safety against the sudden wrath of some of us, such as Tulkas, who could not be restrained in a frenzy of battle. Now that Mairon had come himself, I was ready to assure him that I was prepared to speak on his behalf in court, should it come to this, so that his sentence could be reduced and his brilliant mind could once again grace the forges in Tirion. 

I told him that, and he called me a fool, and worse. 

His demeanor was inexplicably rushed, furtive, he wanted to know what Manwë would do if the Silmarils were recovered. If, he spoke in hypotheticals only, if Manwë would be willing to use them in war, if instead he would be able to raise another kind of power, equal in might. 

In considerable surprise, I told him not to focus on such matters anymore, the Silmarils were lost until the world would be mended and our song would begin anew, and Arda could now enter an era of peace and prosperity.

Mairon did not believe my words. He could not understand why we were not ordered to return to Valinor, what we could still be waiting for even now, when the final battle was over and the slow rebuilding began in the few townships of Men and the scattered fortifications of Elves that were still standing. 

To be fair, neither could I, but I learned long ago not to question the judgment of Manwë. I told Mairon to submit to it now, and I would do what I could to appeal to my Lord’s mercy, and as his own Herald, it would not be little. Surely, his crimes were not beyond forgiveness, I said.

Mairon looked at me…I shall not remember that twisted grimace of mixed terror and pity, thrown as a mask over the deep loss gnawing him from within. 

I shall not repeat him curse what passes for mercy in Valinor and ask whether I was sure my own crimes were not beyond forgiveness. 

What crimes could he be talking about? I wondered.

I shall not think of what I then failed to ask him, as I bid him a stiff, formal farewell. 

The next morning the world came to an end. 

It began as a flash and a sudden lurch, the soil under our feet turning to liquid in less than an intake of breath, a moment of eerie silence followed by a low booming roar so loud that it was splitting rocks and shattering trees. We – the Ainu host – were suddenly lifted above the few clouds scattered on that clear day of early spring, rosy with promise of growth, the first buds turning to blossom. The last day Beleriand would ever see. 

I shall not describe the twisted maelstrom of land breaking into volcanoes, fires quenched by the sea in a fountain of steam that reached the sky. The sight of towns swallowed under a wave, the screams of pain and terror in a mingled cacophony of voices, of Men, Elves, Orcs and Ents, the animals running in panic, the birds caught in flight by a curtain of water. And the light of Eärendil right before he went over the horizon, watching the land he fought so hard to save now boil in the wrath of the Valar.

What crimes could be beyond forgiveness? 

Dumbly, mechanically, I fell into my place in the ranks as we rode back to Valinor, my fellow Maiar with expressions of mixed horror and pride, the deadly satisfaction of serving justice and the realization of the kind of retribution that would inevitably follow another rebellion. 

Now I shall think of the streets of Tirion covered in flowers to greet our victorious host, and Calacirya shining calmly, unmarred by blood and fire. 

I shall think of the long road to the West reopened for those Firstborn who will grow tired of the sorrows of Arda and wish to return.

But not Círdan, for he will be needed until the last ship is built.

But not Eärendil, for he is forced to circle around Arda watching what passes for victory when one such as he dares to petition the Valar.

But not those who had joined in the Oath and refused to repent, even though they had committed no other crime in word or deed. 

I catch myself wondering what happened to Mairon and his fellow Maiar, the misshapen, foul-mouthed, bat-winged dragon rider who used to be an outcast in our own halls, the Valaraukar who, as spirits of flame, would probably not survive the drowning. Are they all beneath the Sea now, or have they followed Morgoth into the Void? 

I shall stop at the cusp of wishing for their escape.

Now I shall keep myself busy with training the less experienced Maiar and the few selected Elves who wish to join our Lord’s court, making announcements on behalf of Manwë, developing new weaponry, practicing the arts of combat on the green fields of Valinor. 

I may help with raising new cities for Elves coming in from – Eriador, I believe, that is the name for it. 

And I shall not think of anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" - Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad-gita after the first nuclear test.
> 
> The destruction of Beleriand can be interpreted as canon - or as a take on Silmarils being an equivalent of nuclear power and having been recovered and used by the Valar.


	4. The Brightest Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eärendil's ship is about to disappear beneath the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to add another chapter to this work, because I wanted to end on a message of hope and defiance, and explore the technology of the Arda Forged universe a little more.

Routine is a ladder, a crutch, a shield. A way to ensure that my ship will remain on course, with regular repairs and resupply missions, and messages between orbit and Valinor faithfully carried by my wife who had gained wings of her own. A way to reassure all those who might be watching, if they can still find time to raise their eyes upwards from the barren battlefields that used to be their homes, that their youngest and brightest star will keep on moving straight across the sky, and reappear the next evening on the horizon without fail. Possibly the only steady thing about their lives.

From Remmirath at sunset through Valacirca at midnight, to Menelvagor close to dawn, and back again the following night. The steady light and dizzying speed that could only come from a Silmaril in all its terrible, deadly glory. Long before they put it on the brow of my ship, it scorched the hands of the Enemy, who harnessed its light and heat to feed his armies in the frozen North. I envy Morgoth - he had to handle the Silmarils directly only once, on his way from Valinor, while every evening I wake up drenched in sweat, stumbling through the night in a weary shuffle, in an eternal standout against pain wrecking my body: my immortality against the Silima.

I wish I could have chosen the fate of my father’s father, and was ready to claim it as a boon after Ancalagon fell and I turned the shaky, limping Vingilótë, barely more than a pile of scrap metal, back towards Valinor. The sweetness of choice to follow Men after death, on paths unknown even to the Valar, the ultimate gift for the heart of an explorer! How I longed for it ever since Círdan showed me how to steer my first ship and I turned it due West, only to return home a few hours later, both me and the ship battered by the waves of Ulmo. The longing for new shores remained, not to be quenched, not by Valinor, which, after all, was hardly a novelty as it contained more Eldar than I had left in the Havens; not even by the stars, which remain tantalizingly just out of reach as I move far below them, circling around Arda in the same endless orbit.

My dreams of exploration were cut short when the Valar asked us to hand over the Silmaril, and Elwing suddenly stared daggers at Mandos and Manwë standing side by side, and claimed it as her rightful inheritance. I had never seen such frozen hatred in her face and could not for the life of me understand what her goal was. Honestly, I felt relieved for the accursed Silmaril to finally leave our hands, and was more than ready to let the Valar take care of it, while I could enjoy some well-earned rest during what remained of a human life before my next big adventure. But I knew better than to interfere with my wife, who grew up between kinslayings and refugee camps while I enjoyed the relative wealth of my father’s court, followed by being pampered by Círdan in the Havens like a son he never had; or so Elwing would not fail to remind me during our arguments. Yet, harsh and angry as she often was, her intelligence and determination shone brighter than any star, and I never failed to count myself lucky.

Mandos announced in his most portentous voice that he would not accept the Silmaril to be outside his care in either Arda or Valinor, expecting Elwing to relinquish her claim to it.

This Vala clearly had not met my wife before. Elwing never, ever gives up, and least of all when forces are vastly unbalanced and she is on the losing side.

She hissed right back at him in the tone used exclusively for our meanest arguments: _Agreed. Let us take it to the skies then, and put its power out of reach of any armies. Even yours._

It took me until that moment to realize what she was playing at. Not surprising - Elwing had always been quicker to invent new uses for the tools we had designed together when we had still been courting. Oh, the memories of the romantic evenings we had spent at the Havens, our heads bent together over the parchment!

I still thought her foolish, obsessed with the idea of someone turning her Silmaril into a weapon, when surely nobody would even dare to attempt anything of the sort. After all, they would be playing with a power that had run for an Age without reaching its limits, and was apparently deemed too fearsome to be used in battle even by the Enemy himself. 

My rather condescending pat on Elwing’s arm to reassure her quickly turned into a terrified squeeze, because, apparently, Manwë did not consider that idea foolish at all, and now was seething with fury. Elwing did not even acknowledge him through this entire interaction, her eyes fixed hard on Mandos, whose face showed begrudging respect. Until Manwë interrupted us in a voice like an avalanche – _If this is your wish, who will take it to the skies, and seal their fate with the Silmaril forever?_

I was surprised to hear the courage of my voice that I certainly did not feel as I spoke back at him.

_I will. We will build another Vingilótë, one fit to travel between the stars as my last one flew through the air, and the one before it tamed the Sea to reach the shores of Valinor._

Elwing squeezed my hand back in gratitude, and I have to admit, for a moment I wished I had never met her or heard of the Silmarils, because I realized I was not yet done dooming myself to all the fates I had tried so hard to avoid, to a lifetime of boredom in the skies... a lifetime that now would last an eternity.

_I know a body of Man would fail at the exposure to the Silima, as did Lúthien’s, whose time was short and sorrowful even by the measure of mortals. But I have the same choice as she did. And I choose to become one of the Eldar, so that I could keep this duty that I now assume of my own free will._

I deliberately made my answer sufficiently pompous to match Manwë’s question, and I knew that Elwing appreciated the sarcasm, even though she could hardly let it show on her face. The Valar agreed – what else could they do?

The rest was…mostly, routine. Of building a ship, equipping and supplying it in record time, with the help of absolutely marvelous Teleri engineers – how I wish I could have stayed with them for a century or two, now that I have accepted my Elvishness. The newest Vingilótë was ready to launch barely before the Valar finally broke through the tunnels in Thangorodrim, now in ruins after I dropped Ancalagon straight onto its towers. And what a fight that was! I had never been in such a protracted battle – that rider of his could match my wife in sheer determination, and I do not say so lightly.

Thus, in the end we were victorious, I was in orbit, and Elwing was serving as a messenger on a supply convoy between myself and Valinor, telling me that the other two Silmarils had apparently been recaptured by the sons of Fëanor, who, for whatever reason or oath of their own, would never use them in battle either. I thought, this might not be an ending to our story that we had hoped for, but we could work with it.

I did not realize that the Fëanorians, after spending an Age killing everyone in sight to get to their precious Silmarils, would promptly _get rid of them_ once they finally succeeded! I could hardly be more sympathetic for those exposed to the Silima, but they surely could endure at least until the Valar were safely back in Valinor and had forgotten about the war? Because neither sea nor the deepest chasms are outside the Valar’s dominion, and Ulmo and Aulë are apparently beholden to Manwë’s orders, though as they fished out the Silmarils and handed them to Manwë, I do not know if they had any idea that Manwë would not simply lock them away for safekeeping. At least that is what Elwing and I worked out later, watching the stars from the prow of my ship, round and round, Valacirca to Remmirath to Menelvagor, and back again.

At that time, all I knew was that just as I was about to disappear beneath the horizon on a routine spring morning, Vingilótë started shaking and swerving like a river boat thrown into rapids, and the skies behind me were blocked by an enormous, impossible wall of steam, rising ever higher until it was blown apart by the winds. And Beleriand was no more. Only frothing waves higher than the towers of Gondolin - which, wrecked and ruined as it was, but still my home, now lay beneath the Sea, together with all our kingdoms of allies and enemies alike. And I could not even stop to make sense of what just happened, as I disappeared beneath the horizon on my immutable course through the skies, waiting for Elwing to arrive and tell me that it was a mirage, an illusion brought about by boredom and solitude.

Of course, there were plenty of survivors, even some of my own family lived on, those who had chosen to build their kingdoms on the shores of Anduin instead of Sirion. Not that there was anything I could do to help. This was more painful than the slow torture of the Silima: I, who did not blink an eye before jumping into the Sundering Seas on a fool’s errand to Valinor, was now forced to watch my people slog through the aftermath of a war more brutal than an entire Age before it, and I could not even send them a message of support.

Routine is like a knife: it can be a tool or a weapon, depending on the hand that wields it.

The Valar used it as a tool to bind me to Arda, ensuring that an eternal reminder of the War of Wrath will be shining from the heavens, and moved on with their ruling and their creating, leaving my sustenance to Elwing. My poor wife, who during all this time in Valinor would not be accepted by the Noldor nor the Teleri: too distrustful, too ambitious, too proud. The only person she befriended was Nerdanel, another outcast by association, and a more brilliant mind than any that had ever graced Valinor or Arda, including, if I may give my opinion, her own husband.

Nerdanel took Elwing to the forges of Aulë where they could work unsupervised by anyone – she only needed to tell the Vala that Elwing wanted to learn the art of smelting bronze for creating sculptures. Instead, over long years of work, together they engineered and built a machine of impossible precision and strength. Elwing flew it up to Vingilótë on her latest trip. Their creation has a leaden nest that could contain a Silmaril without diminishing its light, and it can be set on the same course as my ship, to ensure that the brightest star would continue rising in the West every evening without fail, until the world is mended and our deceit discovered.

Meanwhile, we launch at dawn. Vingilótë is packed, supplied and ready for another Age. We no longer accept to be separated by seas nor skies, nor indeed, the wrath of the Valar, for where would they find a navigator that could match my skill, and a ship faster than mine to sail the Void? We have set the course straight to Remmirath, Elwing and I, with nothing left to mourn behind us, and worlds to be explored ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same as in Let Everlasting Light Shine Upon Us, Silima is an equivalent of nuclear power, to be used for either light or destruction, and causing radiation sickness in all those who handle it...

**Author's Note:**

> The author lives on feedback! :)
> 
> If you would like to hear other voices, please leave suggestions in the comments!
> 
> lemurious on tumblr as well.


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